‘Devastated, heartbroken’: Against the odds, Gaza aid providers keep going
Al Jazeera
They’ve lost colleagues, families and homes. Israel has painted them as the enemy. But UNRWA and others refuse to stop.
When Hussam Okal sought shelter with his family at a training centre in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in October, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) staffer found the place full with an estimated 22,000 people searching — like him — for safety from Israeli bombs.
“We’re working on two sides. On the one side, we’re trying to keep our families safe, and on the other, we’re trying to serve the displaced people,” he said at the time. “As UNRWA staff, we carry a humanitarian message to try to offer as much assistance as we can.”
It is a task that the UN agency has performed since 1950 in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, serving as a lifeline for Palestinians. It runs schools, health programmes and more for the Palestinian refugees and their descendants who have been deprived of their homeland since the Nakba when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their land during the 1948 creation of Israel.
For decades, its UN blue logo has been a source of support for Palestinians. Now, in Gaza, it is struggling to fulfil its mission, in a war where the UNRWA has suffered like never before.
At least 146 UNRWA staffers have been killed in Israeli bombings, the highest-ever death toll for any UN agency in a war. Others have lost their homes and family members. Like Okal, they have been forced to seek safety in schools and training centres their own teams set up in the past. The war is scarring the agency — and its leadership is not immune.
